Text that identifies portions of a larger document, especially text marked as a heading.
The intent of this success criterion is to help users understand how content is organized.
Editorial Note: Editorial note: In future Working Drafts, this section will contain links to relevant sections of General Techniques for WCAG 2.0. The information below is presented to indicate the types of material that are available.
Section titles give an overview of topics addressed in a document or other resource. They guide users’ attention and help them remember important ideas and information. User agents may use section titles to create an automatic Tqable of Contents, or simply create a list of sections. Section titles that do not give users information about the content make the document harder to understand. Clear and informative section titles help users understand the document or other resource.
HTML Techniques
Section headings
Header misuse
Advisory techniques: going beyond Guideline 3.1 L3 SC4
Put the most important words at the beginning of the link or section heading.
This success criterion helps people who use screen readers by ensuring that section titles convey meaningful information when heard out of context—for example in a Table of Contents , or when jumping from heading to heading within a page.
This success criterion may also help users with low vision who may see only a few words at a time.
Users with reading disabilities benefit when section titles make it possible to predict what each section contains.
Example 1: A news site.
The home page of a news site lists the headlines for the top stories of the hour. Under each heading are the first 35 words of the story and a link to the full article. Each headline gives a clear idea of the article’s subject.
Theofanos, M.F., and Redish, J. (2003). Guidelines for Accessible and Usable Web Sites: Observing Users Who Work With Screen Readers. Interactions, Volume X, Issue 6, November-December 2003, pages 38-51, http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/947226.947227. Retrieved 3 May 2005 from http://redish.net/content/papers/interactions.html.